Background Check

Welcome to California. Or more specifically, welcome to our future.

In California, we pass laws, and then later, we get more laws to do what the first laws would do, except they didn’t bother. This is what passes for progress. Our politicians pretend to solve problems by making laws, and then our legal system pretends to enforce the laws, and then when it becomes apparent that nothing has been done, or even tried to be done, and nothing was fixed with the laws, we get new laws to do what the others didn’t, and then repeat as necessary.

Yeah, I know. That’s what I thought. See, I can read your mind. And yeah, it is a scam. But sadly, it’s our scam.

Here’s the deal…this time.

California has had some laws for twenty years. These laws mandate stringent background checks to insure that when a criminal or crazy person tries to purchase a gun, the state won’t allow it. If you purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer, your background is checked for a criminal record or severe mental illness. Every time you choose to buy a gun, they check you again. This takes only a few minutes. You pay a fee for this service. If your background reflects crime in your past, you don’t pass and you cannot buy that gun. If you are the good law abiding citizen, you can.

Then you wait ten more days, which of course is meaningless but annoying, and if nobody materializes saying you shouldn’t have that gun, it’s yours.

We have laws that state if you try to buy a gun from your best friend who’s known you for decades, you still must jump through these same hoops. A licensed agent who oversees the transfer does your background check, and holds the gun for ten days. Buy a gun at a gun show…same deal. And again, you pay that fee for the service.

Your dad can give you a gun without a background check. I believe your grandfather can too. But if I’m not mistaken, you cannot give a gun to your brother without a background check. You know how brothers can be. Any other way you can think of, you must pass a background check to get a gun in California.

We have laws that say you cannot buy a gun for anyone else. You cannot sell or give a gun to a criminal or crazy person. And you must lock up your guns so criminals and crazy people cannot stumble across them. The California background check for firearm purchase has no loopholes, either real or imagined. It’s the best our politicians said they can do to protect us all from guns.

Oh, and there are many federal firearms laws that apply in California, laws that also prevent criminals from obtaining or possessing guns.

So, it should be just about impossible for a criminal or crazy person to get a gun in our state. The assumption here would be, no criminals with guns, no crime. Problem solved.

California keeps track of some things. And they make some guesses about other things they cannot really count. And now they are saying that a few guns have slipped through their impenetrable web of background checks and limits upon gun sales. And some people who aren’t allowed to have guns might have them. California confesses that it’s not quite a perfect system.

Not quite a perfect system.

California keeps track of a list of those people deemed guilty of violent crimes, various felonies, and those with restraining orders and also those mentally messed up enough that they’ve been told not to have guns. If these folks are on the list, they cannot pass a background check, so they cannot acquire firearms. The list, by the way, is something like 30,000 people large. This is a big state, and we have more than our share of criminals (despite all these laws) and crazy people, but yeah, that’s a large list.

According to the state of California, twenty thousand people on this list who are prohibited by law from possessing firearms, who cannot buy or be given a firearm, have firearms anyway. The state suggests that there are 40,000 guns in the hands of these people on their list of prohibited people. This doesn’t even count all the other criminals out there not yet on the list. Just the ones on the list. Problem solved?

So, ya see…don’t tell anyone, but this bunch of laws isn’t working all that well, if the goal here was keeping guns away from criminals. Therefore, of course, our politicians say we need more of the same laws to protect us all from the evil of guns. There are forty some suggestions for new laws working their way through the legislature now, all about more gun restrictions. That’s so we can make the same things illegal that we already made illegal. Makes sense to me. Anyway, that’s what we do in California. Let me know how much safer you feel.

There is a twist to this time around that I found interesting. The politician who sponsored our latest new law to pass is so happy about this one. Seems that all those times in the past decades when citizens submitted to a background check to purchase a firearm legally, and they passed, a record was kept. And now…”we have the technology” so some clever nerd can run the names of one million folks who have submitted to background checks, (and presumably purchased a legal firearm at some point in the past) and can then run those names against the list of prohibited folks, and if some match, well them puppies must own a gun illegally. Don’t know if that means all 20,000 people who the state thinks illegally possess a gun, which seems a bit of a stretch, (this would suggest that two thirds of all convicted criminals and crazy people once bought a legal firearm) but somebody wants us to believe this. My guess would be that most of these folks on the list didn’t buy their gun long ago, legally, but what do I know? If I’m right, those laws are even more worthless. Who’d want to admit this?

California has quietly been confiscating firearms using this information since 07, but because of lack of funding, only the slightest dent has been put in the “mountain of illegal guns on the street.” So if we could only afford, as the richest state in America, to hire a few more cops to chase down these folks, we could confiscate all those guns. Well, guess what the politician did…He just found the money to pay for this.

Ya see, we’ve been a bit broke around here since our politicians irresponsibly but enthusiastically spent way more than they had for some considerable time, and those chickens done come home to roost. So even though we knew we had 20,000 law breaking law breakers out there, we didn’t bother to find the resources to do anything about it. That’s pretty much the same story you get if you ask why the Feds haven’t managed to enforce their laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, either. For years and years. And years. We had money to spend on lots of other nonsense, but that is another essay. California did nothing about these criminals. And neither did our presidents’ men. (We don’t enforce the laws we already have, so of course we need more laws, and more restrictions on the citizens who don’t break the laws. Because our protectors, our state and federal government, don’t do their part. This works out so well for our politicians, that it’s almost as if this was done on purpose.

So, now we have the money to hire the cops to finally check the folks who once could legally purchase a gun, who now are on the list so they cannot, and we will presumably turn those cops loose to correct this oversight. Good for us. What could be wrong with this?

Can I make a list?

1)      The money they found to pay for this comes from the DROS fund. The DROS fund is that money we citizens have paid for the privilege of a background check in order to legally buy a firearm. It pays for the background check. Of course they charge far more than needed, which some wag might suggest is intended to discourage folks from buying guns, but I wander….Anyway, there is a surplus sitting in this fund, and the politician is gonna borrow a bit from this surplus, about $24 million, to pay for this new law. So the good law abiding citizen who followed the rules to purchase a firearm, and paid the freight for this, gets to pay for the time and trouble to arrest criminals for doing criminal things. Like it was our fault for all that criminal stuff all along.

2)      Some might wonder why this new law isn’t being paid for from the general fund, as if the entire population of our state was vested in keeping criminals from doing criminal things. But the general fund is running on fumes and shaky promises right now, and a tax increase would be needed, which ain’t gonna happen because even in California we are real sick and tired about our taxes already, and a two thirds majority won’t be happening. So why not steal from money already there? Ah ha!!! Problem solved.

3)      The whole notion that the law abiding folks should pay for the criminal behavior of some others, simply because some politicians cannot see ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAW ABIDING GUN OWNERS AND CRIMINALS bothers me a bit. Sure…guns are the spawn of the devil and the mere passing of the image of a gun through the mind of a citizen will lead to the murder of children….oh hell. Never mind. Who can argue with logic like that?

4)      We are currently releasing THOUSANDS of California criminals from our California prisons because we got caught treating them like criminals instead of housing them in a spa with piped in essence of Myrth or whatever. Gotta be nice to criminals these days. My cops tell me that these released criminals are causing all kinda havoc again once they hit the street, which fits the usual theme. So I’m sitting here wondering where they plan on putting all these twenty thousand criminals with guns they aren’t supposed to have if we do actually catch that many. They cannot put them in our prisons. When the music stops, there won’t be near enough chairs. So what will they do with these folks after the cops risk their lives to capture them? Well…they will turn them loose, of course. Catch and release fishing; keeps the fishery healthy. After they confiscate their guns. Yep, that’s the word they use. Confiscate.

5)      Politicians lie. Regularly and often. They promise to protect us from crime, and then they tell us it is the guns and not the criminals we must fear. So after they confiscate their guns, they turn the criminals loose, no doubt reformed and ready to do their duty in society.

6)      Does it comfort me to know that the only laws that actually reduce crime rates are those laws that put criminals in jail for a while, and those laws that merely disarm the good people, without addressing the criminals, actually increase crime? And that the politician in question here would much rather inconvenience the good guys then the criminal, and I’m supposed to thank him for this? Can you spell messed up? Let’s see…C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A

7)      Does it comfort me to know that a politician thinks it is OK to CONFISCATE guns from criminals located by a REGISTRY of LEGAL gun purchases, when such a politician has never demonstrated that he can see any difference between the legal citizen’s constitutional right to own firearms, and the callous disregard for life and property demonstrated by criminals misusing guns? Ah, no…it does not. For this sets a dangerous precedent.

8)      The politician states that those 40,000 guns are “handguns and assault weapons” even though he has no clue if these folks on the list even own a gun, much less what version. He assumes we will concur that such guns as handguns and assault weapons are evil because of all that propaganda they’ve loosed on us over the years, despite the evidence and reality that no such evil attaches to them. And we are supposed to cheer him on as our savior, and presumably re-elect him forever. He is eagerly demonizing the weapon while discounting the criminal. He is starting with these evil firearms, and then the next firearm will become the next evil primed for a ban, and a new list will start. And just maybe, he’ll be confiscating that one shortly, for why not use the same database to locate the owners of the latest firearm made illegal by fiat? And that would of course include the (formerly) law abiding citizens.

9)      Do I wonder where all this might lead? Welcome to your future.

Shameful

Shameful---violating what is considered to be just, moral, or decent; offensive

Webster’s

The president is not happy. He is petulant and pouting. He’s been waiting a long time, most of his adult life, to put an end to the individual citizen’s right to own firearms in America. Every chance he’s had since he entered the crooked world of politics in the state of Illinois, and during his brief time in the US Senate, he has voted to erode this right. The president may have been a Constitutional professor, but on his own he’s decided that the 2^nd Amendment is somehow the only amendment among the ten in the Bill of Rights (actually nine, for the 10th was to apply to the states and the people, and it states that clearly) that was not intended to convey an individual right. 

The president might suggest that those brilliant men who founded this country must have been sipping the brandy late into the night when they came up with that one. The reality that these men were all well-educated and experienced, schooled in the sordid history of the world, and intimately, personally, and painfully acquainted with tyrannical government and the application of an armed citizenry in resistance to that government, apparently didn’t persuade them to include a 2^nd Amendment specifically to preserve an individual right to preserve freedom with firearms. It must be a mistake on our part to think such nonsense. 

Two centuries ago, the founders must have instead foreseen the National Guard. Yeah, that’s what they must have meant. Brilliant prescient men hoping to preserve a republic responsive to its citizens, men who opposed oppressive government and the whole notion of a standing army, for standing armies were always looking for something nefarious to do, would choose for the protection of liberty in the face of an army…. the reserve branch of that army.

Make no mistake…the man is not stupid. Far from it. He’s had a lot of determined help to get to where he is now, and his handlers have, ah, handled him well. He has surrounded himself by folks who feel exactly as he does.  He sees himself as poised to irrevocably alter the future of our country. And that would require disarming the populace. But his efforts have not been met with universal acclaim. 

Our president has a little trouble understanding why this is so. Our president has been exceptionally well schooled in the criticism of the American way of life, and the need to end so much of the nonsense that his subjects have clung to for all these generations. He sincerely doesn’t understand why many of us do not feel the same. In our president’s mind, he’s got it right and we are misguided fools who cling to obsolete notions of self-reliance, hard work and honesty, God and guns. And we should be dismissed, re-educated, or put away for the good of….him, I guess.

The president has his vision for the future of America. Trouble is, we keep popping up, getting in his way.

Who’s we?

Well first, who is them?

I’ll start with the president, who is a firm believer in the incompetence and inabilities of his subjects, who is a firm believer in the need and usefulness of an all powerful government to take care of and control such people, who is a firm believer in himself as the dude ordained to be put in charge of all of this. He likes being the dude in charge. And he views his subjects with disdain.

Next would be the folks who put the president in charge, who thus elevate themselves to power, and also those who populate all the levels of the president’s government, who are motivated to perpetuate their position and their power.

And…then there’s the educators, media types, and community organizers who likewise feel that the government does a much better job of keeping people in line than the citizens themselves. You know….most all of these folks. For they also benefit from a government in charge of all, as long as they toe the party line.

If you dismiss those citizens who don’t much care about anything, and simply consider the rest of the people who do, about half of this rest think the government does a better job than the people of keeping folks out of trouble, and keeping them toeing the line. And this half will gladly turn the reins over to government and then relax to enjoy the progress. They be the them, too.

The other half of citizens who do care, the ones who prefer to make their own decisions, direct their children in the right ways, and who profit or lose on their own genius or mistakes, would be the we. We would prefer to limit the scope of government control, for rather than not trusting ourselves, we don’t much trust government, or more specifically….the people of government. Like the dude. Which might explain why we are so fond of the Bill of Rights.

Our president, when he became the dude, promised to change everything. That’s how he got that far. Promises. He promised all the benefit that a government could possibly shower upon the masses, and then he promised that none of the nastiness that flows downhill from government would actually flow.

The president would have the people dependent upon a government to provide all of this and that, regardless of cost. He promised to make all fair, by bringing down success. He would engineer prosperity. He promised that everyone would be safe from “gun violence”. He eventually promised much, regardless of what he could deliver. He would make everyone happy. He smiled a lot. No surprise this appealed to them. 

Some of the president’s wishes came true, and he was happy. But we were soon alarmed at his actions, the insanity of the cost of it all, and the cost to our freedom, and we began to oppose him. This made the dude unhappy. He was clever enough to tone things down just enough to get himself re-elected. Then he set out yet again on his quest for total government control. 

Shortly after our president was returned to office, a madman murdered twenty little children. This allowed our president to act very sad. He cried in front of cameras. Then he loosed a litany of lies about firearms and the people who own them, and the people who buy and sell them, and the people who defend that right. And then he lied some more, as did the them. He told us he supported the Second Amendment, and he wasn’t going to take away the citizens’ guns, and then he set out to do just that. But only because of common sense. And this made the them happy, and they heaped support upon him.

And we said, “Wait a minute.”

You know the rest, and so you know that the new gun restrictions were not at all about saving the children, and they were roundly criticized as useless against criminals but harmful to the good people, and they were eventually pared down to only the least offensive, and even this was voted away in the Senate this week. And now the president is petulant and pouting. He says it is a “shameful day for Washington”.  Most of them agree. 

About all you hear now is how horrid a result this is. Every politician whose name you recognize from the one party is enraged. That which passes for news coverage is enraged.  It’s almost as if there is no other opinion, for little or nothing is heard from any other side. The voice of another side doesn’t exist to our news media. So why oh why didn’t gun control pass?

The blame for the outrage against common sense is laid at the feet of the National Rifle Association, for they are so powerful. They are the gun lobby, and they want more guns so more children will die, for this empowers the gun makers who only want more people to die. And the Senate lawmakers cower before the powerful gun lobby, and thus they are cowards, and that is shameful. So says our president, and his party, and his media.

It’s funny how when you never get to hear an opposing argument, you never know there is one. This is almost the same as if it doesn’t exist. So then it all appears as if the president has no opposition. It’s only the evil NRA that opposes common sense, and wants children killed. Apparently, nobody else says a word in opposition to the president, for he is the good guy here.

We are the other half, the half who doesn’t exist, and we purchased 20 million firearms since the president won re-election. Because we wanted them, and this is still allowed by a government that increasingly denies that this is a citizen’s right. And we have increased the ranks of the evil NRA. We didn’t do this because we are evil. We did this because we fear our own president.

We see things in a different way, not surprisingly, than them. We see an individual right in the Second Amendment. We see much usefulness in citizens owning and using firearms for good. We see a firearms industry which produces a legal and important product, puts 33 billion dollars into the economy, and employs twice as many people in manufacturing as General Motors. And we see a different definition of shameful behavior. 

The president is furious with senators who voted against his gun control measures, suggesting that they were intimidated by the reality that they would be voted out of office by Second Amendment supporters. Yet this president did not pursue his own gun ban agenda prior to his run for re-election, fearing it would lead to his defeat by supporters of the 2^nd Amendment.

We think it is an outrage when the president views the murders of 20 children as a fortuitous event, an opportunity to press his gun ban agenda. Some mayors, a vice president, governors, and various other representatives and senators were also celebrating, and they are all from the same party. The president doesn’t call this unified exploitation of dead children politics. When the president goes down in defeat….THAT is politics.

The president sends Air Force One to fly in the families of dead children, so he can benefit by surrounding himself with them and their grief, and the media praises as he “make hay while the sun shines” over the graves of their dead children. (And yes, a politician in the president’s party actually said this) Then he states that millions of us phoning and emailing our elected representatives to express our opinion in opposition to his, is shameful. We are extremists.

And so, yeah… we think the NRA is the good guy, and the president and his cronies are not. 

Sadly, the president doesn’t respect the will of the people. 

Wow, what a difference from what we hear from them. We know our opinions exist. We wonder why our president, and his party, and his supporters in the media, don’t want our opinions heard. But we do know that petitioning our elected representatives fits the plan of the founders, and the iron rule of a president does not.

NRA 500 NASCAR

I’m watching the NRA 500 NASCAR race on TV while typing this.  I guess that makes me……wait a minute….

If you support the right of citizens to own firearms, they have disparaging names for you. Gun Nut comes to mind. Knuckle Dragging Reprobate has been used. Somebody called me this once without knowing I was walking right beside him, as he stood there staring at the NRA sticker on my truck(not a Prius) window.

 I was parked at the national seashore, getting ready to hike among the wildflowers and the elk herd. I was coming back from the outhouse, which I had visited for the usual reasons. I was hiking for the usual reasons too, so I must have blended in with the various people this guy might have approved of. This time I wasn’t  wearing body armor, carrying a black colored military style large capacity high powered penis augmenting assault weapon, or for that matter, planning my next mass public shooting, so he didn’t recognize me as the enemy when I walked by. 

I was simply enjoying the wonder of the park. But I had a sticker on my window, deliberately, and without remorse. So I shouldn’t have been surprised at the less than cordial response from that other citizen. He was simply doing what he’d been trained to do. He was hating me.

Likely, he would have been surprised, for I didn’t shoot him.

Wasn’t even considering it. Wasn’t armed. Wasn’t angry. Wasn’t feeling vengeful. And of course, I don’t do such things. Did shake my head a little, cause I do that when attacked for no good reason, but ya get used to this abuse if you support the Constitution and the rights of citizens….you get used to it after a while, because it keeps coming.

Lotta talk about bullying these days. Gotta stop bullying in school, because it hurts feelings, and drives kids to suicide, or messes with their self-esteem.  But then there is that other bullying that is deliberate and encouraged, and it’s coming from the folks who claim to be the good guys. And they do it for a reason.

I’m familiar with the bullying when the other side was in charge of the country, and the House Un-American Activities folks went after the Communists hiding under the beds. Sure, the Communists had undeniably  infiltrated Hollywood, and they were doing their best to undermine our society, but that never excused the abuse heaped upon the innocent and the harmless that characterized those witch hunts.

And I watched as the other extreme, the folks who call themselves progressive, scramble to assume control over our country. They are clearly in charge now, and they know it. And it is their turn to bully, and to persecute folks under beds.

Got to give them credit, for they have done everything right in their power grab. They’ve taken over education of our children, most of the sources of news and information, (just like the Communists tried back in the 50’s) and they are working on locking down government to do their bidding. They’ve done an effective job so far. But the issue isn’t settled quite yet, and we are still in the demonizing, name calling, and misinformation (lying) stage of seizing power.

You remember my theory, (yeah, it’s probably somebody else’s idea, but I’ve fallen in love with it) where I postulate that if we didn’t have enemies, we wouldn’t need leaders, so any ambitious sociopath who wishes to assume a leadership role needs to invent an enemy so folks will clamor for rescue, and promote said sociopath to control. 

You see this at all levels. Remember that one girl in high school who turned the whole click against one helpless gal so she could bask in the thrill of power and control? Have you been caught up in office politics? Ever see this behavior from the ambitious or greedy leader of a church dressed in a shiny suit? Heck, ever not?

Military leaders, the leaders of countries, the leaders of revolutions all play this card. This is the history of human civilization. The leader points out somebody and instructs followers to hate, to abuse, to bully, all in the name of good of course, for those others are bad. Rally to the cause, or whatever. Hate for good.

So I’ve grown accustomed to being, ah, bad.

I was too young to notice the witch hunts of the early 50’s, but I wouldn’t have liked those guys. Now as I watch the other side pull the same hurtful nonsense, I don’t much like them, either. Both of these reprehensible groups want the same thing. Power and control. They want to run the place, and they choose their enemies to hate for no more reason than they were the folks who were in the way, and there’s only room for one on top.  And we get to watch as they name call, misinform, demonize, and otherwise manipulate people to hate and bully invented enemies so they can in turn take control of the power over us.

This all has been done many times before; it is all of history after all, and the people get caught up in it every single time. They get used by sociopaths who want to run their lives. 

Hitler turned his subjects against the Jews by comparing them to rats, lying and misinforming. He demonized an enemy the people would rally against, and oh by the way, put Hitler into power to save them. That worked out, right? Stalin pulled the same nonsense with all the various millions of enemies of the state that he imprisoned and executed to keep himself in power. Radical Islam instructs its followers to hate some folks, and guess where that leads? And dontcha wonder about the crew in Kansas that thinks we all should rally against and kill homosexuals?

Among many others, the socialists who are taking over this country, in the guise of being progressive, have assembled a long list of enemies their subjects are instructed to hate, and bully. The Occupy folks went after “the capitalists”, those nasty Tea Party people who opposed a government ruined healthcare system earned all manner of names and disrespect from our new bosses, and don’t forget the disdain with which our president reserves for the people who cling to God and Guns. Heaven help ya if you try to quietly live your own religion today, and you be damned if you own guns.

I haven’t become an enemy of the state because of my religion. Or because I am a capitalist…..yet.  I’m useful as a cash cow now, to be taxed mercilessly and to be held up as yet another enemy of the people.

But wow, if I own guns……well that’s the worstest, most dangerous  enemy of all, and I must be stopped. We need some leaders to stop me. And ya all better be calling me nasty names, cause that’s what you do to bully and demonize folks for the good of your leaders. 

I’m not really a bad person. Even my guns aren’t real bad, sitting as they do in my gun safe. It’s not their fault that some are black. But ya never know when I might go off my nut and start killing folks. That’s what guns do. They make people like me into killers. It’s just a matter of time. Just ask our leaders.

So I’m a gun nut. And a knuckle dragging reprobate. 

And the worst, evil, nasty, enemy of the state….is the National Rifle Association. It’s all their fault that the decent people cannot feel safe. It’s the fault of the NRA that criminals act like criminals, that hopelessly overmedicated depressed people kill themselves, that….oh hell….whatever is wrong with America is the fault of the NRA, so let’s save the ink and just blame them for everything. They are the perfect enemy to demonize, to recruit and rally folks to support the new leaders of America, the leaders we need to protect us from the enemy.

Newtown is the NRA’s fault, as are the 500 killers killed in Chicago each year, the crazy man in the tower, the woman-beating-raping man who won’t obey his restraining order, the freak who kills Bambi. All the NRA’s fault. So the venom drips from lips of the news and entertainment media, in the schools, around the water cooler, in the halls of Congress. 

I have another theory. Listen carefully because that’s why this ramble was written. 

The Brady Campaign is the most powerful antigun group, besides the politicians and media, in this country. They have been around for years. They claim to have a million mom march against guns. They claim to be the reasonable and common sense source of information about crime and firearms, and they, uh, lie often. They have 28,000 members scattered about the nation. Their million mom march is even smaller. I think there still might be two ladies in Lafayette who write the newspaper often. The paper of course, publishes their anti-gun letters, obediently. 

The Brady Campaign has the president’s ear, and they have unlimited access to the media, the congress, to any opportunity to get their message out. And they can say most anything without being challenged.

The NRA doesn’t have the president’s ear, and although they occasionally get to talk with an antagonistic congress, their limited opportunity to spread their message to the public through the media nets a tad bit of editing designed to turn their arguments into the raving of lunatics. But…

The NRA has a bit shy of 5 million members, a rather large chest full of money, and the ability to influence some elections, because when they tell 100 million legal, law abiding gun owners in America their version of the truth, said Americans vote, and often those politicians who would deny the citizens their Constitutional rights find themselves out of work, simply because those American voters choose to keep their guns, and the people get rid of some of the worst of the politicians. 

And here is the dirty little secret…Those out of work politicians who lost their gigs over the last few decades because the evil NRA has been helping to save the citizens’ rights….they are the very same politicians who would have been furthering the agenda of the progressive, socialist, or use your favorite term for the current crop that wants to rid us of our freedom and control our lives. Let’s just say…that if we hadn’t been tossing politicians out of office for infringing upon our gun rights, we would be far further along the slide into absolute government control of our country. 

Now you’d think the folks manipulating the information and instructing people who to hate so they will put the socialist folks into leadership, would have figured this out, and they would have adopted a less self-destructive path to control. But perhaps they realize that an armed citizen is not their friend under any scenario they concoct, and their totalitarian dreams cannot be realized as long as freedom can oppose them.

So they continue their assault on gun rights, and upon those of us who own guns, and thus we walk through the shower of insults and attacks on our ethics and our relevance. We endure the bullying and name calling, we try to ignore being called baby killers, and we look for and don’t find the blood on our hands, because we know this is the game, and we must continue to play, or lose our country and our freedom. We refuse to be bullied into silence.

And so I’m watching the NRA 500 NASCAR race, and I have a NRA sticker on the car too, as well as the truck.  The one side says the NRA sponsoring a public event is polarizing, which they say is not right. They are the only ones allowed to polarize, for they need to name enemies to recruit more haters. So no doubt I’ve earned whatever nasty name they want to apply to me this time, too.

 And I can only hope that the next well indoctrinated guy who sees my NRA sticker in a public parking lot supported by my tax dollars, will stop at only insulting me.

Agenda

December 14, 2012

The young madman had been studying the crimes of mass murder, collecting newspaper clippings about the other psychopaths who preceded him, to learn how it’s done. The Media offers up a primer on mass murder every time one of these rare events takes place. The young man sought revenge, or notoriety, or that celebration of his life that forgotten uninspiring people can expect from the 24/7 Media obsession that inevitably follows such horror, an obsession that predictably will last for months.

The young madman had located his mother’s weapons and purchased some of his own. He had acquired samurai swords and a bayonet, but for this crime he chose instead to use firearms. After stealing his mother’s guns, he had at his disposal three rifles, one shotgun, and two handguns. He had a few hundred rounds of ammunition in various types and calibers. The Media will later report this as an arsenal, a house crammed full of guns and ammunition.

Nobody knows what motivated this young madman. Presumably he was angry, but that conclusion is based upon rational thought, and this man was anything but rational. He killed his own mother in her bed, asleep. He then drove to the school where his mother taught. Inside, he entered the very classroom in which his mother taught, and trapping twenty tiny children inside, he murdered them all over the course of five minutes. He also killed the unarmed teachers and school staff members who tried to stop him. And then before he might explain himself to those who wonder why, he killed himself.

The police arrived hoping to stop him. They did their job as well they possibly could, but they were fifteen minutes too late. The principal and teachers who tried to save the children were brave beyond measure, but they lay where the madman killed them. The ambulances, the paramedics, the cops…first responders….the ones running to when everyone else runs away….everybody standing there shocked and helpless….and then when the Media arrived, the circus began.

Circus?!!! Circus? Really?

How dare you use the term circus in connection with this tragedy? This gut-wrenching, appalling, nauseating, heart breaking tragedy? What circus? Little tiny children murdered. Heartlessly. A madman. Good people killed and we don’t even know why the bastard did it. Perhaps we could somehow understand, at least in some small part understand, why this horror happened. Maybe if we could understand this madman’s mind we could learn from this mass murder, and prevent this from ever again happening. But now, how does one make light of child mass murder? Shame on you.

Why, look how the president is rushing to help. Look at the politicians and their tears. Look at the Media and how much attention they are bringing to this tragedy. They are going to fix this so it never happens again. They promise.

Circus!!!

How dare you??

OK….Why circus?

In a nation paralyzed with grief and fear, with children and their protectors dead, a quiet safe little town ripped asunder, never to be the same again, and all of us wretched and angry….don’t ya wonder why  so many view this horror as an OPPORTUNITY?  

That’s right. OPPORTUNITY

If it bleeds, it leads. Yep, the Media views this as an opportunity. Dead people sells. Dead children sells better. Bloody dead children is a gold mine. Too harsh? The Media doesn’t have a right to make a living? Not what I’m sayin’.

The networks, the cable channels, the newspapers showed up with their trucks, their microphones, their helicopters and cameras. Twenty four hours a day, every day for weeks. Some news, most incorrect, some theories, some blather. Great ratings. Money in the bank. Making certain that the next copycat mass murderer will be assured that he will get the face time, the notoriety, the street cred, and the next generation of copycats is already planning.

The opportunity to shape the opinion of America. Attorney general, Holder, says we need better propaganda, we need to reshape the way America thinks. Thank you Media, for providing that propaganda, that reshaping, that indoctrination. The first few days of Media Circus, falling all over themselves at the crime scene, nauseatingly repeating the same incorrect information day and night, morphs into the propaganda machine in the following weeks. The chance to reshape America. Thanks for the opportunity.

Those children were not killed BY a madman WITH a gun. Nope….They were killed BY a gun. Change the way America thinks. It’s not the fault of the killer. Forget him. It’s the gun. The fault is the gun. Time to go after the gun. This is the perfect OPPORTUNITY.

So every news story, every editorial, every film clip and photograph is against the guns, and those evil types who own them. Brutal dishonesty, brutal misinformation, and brutally effective with the folks who don’t know any better. Those children were killed by a high-powered, military style, spraying bullets, fully automatic, assault weapon. And nobody needs one. It’s time for some common sense restrictions, new laws, revise the second amendment, nobody needs it. Ban the weapons designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. Be reasonable. Save the children.

The madman? Not his fault. Blame the weapon. Oh….and forget that the madman could have killed all those children with one of those samurai swords, in the same time, with the same blood all over the floor. But thankfully he used a gun….what an opportunity. 

Why, he fired 154 bullets!! To kill twenty children. They must be far more dead than if he’d used fewer. Certainly they are more dead than if he’d used that sword, or the bayonet, or a hammer, or a chain saw. Far worse.

It’s the Media that will tell you that those kids are more dead because of the choice of a madman’s weapon, that five firearms is an arsenal, that a few boxes of ammunition is a threat to humanity. Indoctrination. Teach em what to think.

Some of the politicians are honest. Yeah, some. When interviewed, they admit this mass murder is an opportunity. They claim to make hay while the sun shines. Yep, I heard em. Carpetbaggers! The vice president climbs on first. He’s running for president next time around, so he has something to prove. It’s about his career. Screw the people. Screw the country.  The same tired lies about assault weapons, the same annoying lies about background checks, the same lies about the folks who support the Second Amendment. Tell the lies often enough…

My politicians, the socialists I’m condemned to live under, that my neighbors voted into office,  tell me we must stem the epidemic of violence, the growing tide. Common sense restrictions. More gun control. All while their own numbers show crime is down, and we already punish the law abiding citizens to the point of distraction while these same politicians are turning hardened criminals loose from our prisons to prey upon the good folks. But my politicians will vote the party line, and damn our rights. Our rights stand in their way, their way to more power.

New York state governor Cuomo is running for president, too. He forces through in the middle of the night, new gun control laws that make his own police officers criminals because they load too many rounds in their service pistols, and he has a war hero arrested because he possessed an empty magazine that might hold too many cartridges. And he says that the eventual confiscation of guns is on the to do list. What a hero. Wish I lived in New York so I could vote there.

A Colorado politician wants to ban standard capacity magazines, for they are so much more dangerous than, oh, maybe nuclear war. She says not to worry that the old ones won’t be confiscated, for once the people shoot em up, they will be worthless. She is such an expert, thank you very much, on firearms, that she doesn’t even know that magazines can be reloaded, but she knows enough to vote a party line, to make sure the honest, law abiding citizen can’t own them, for they cannot be trusted not to open fire on the first school they come across. Vote for Me? Vote for me, the idiot!

Another Colorado politician, when questioned by a woman about why he doesn’t want concealed carry permit holders to be able to walk the same streets on campus where she was raped because she obeyed a silly law and left her gun in her car, replied that he didn’t want to ignore the feelings of other students who’d been indoctrinated to fear firearms. So she should vomit on the rapist next time. That’ll turn him away. Escusss me while I puke.

The biggest opportunity was delivered to our president Obama by this madman killer. Obama has been waiting his entire adult life to take away Americans’ rights to own firearms. He says he supports the Second Amendment, and I believe this is about the only honest thing he has said since the killings. As he views the Second, it does not assure an individual right to keep and bear, so he can infringe all he wants. So on that part, he didn’t lie. Nice to see some honesty from the most ingenuous mind to ever hold court in the Oval Office.

Obama has promised to legislate an end to the killing of children, by subjugating our rights. Another lie. And I’m not talking about subjugating our rights. Nope, we be talking about saving kids. None of this nonsense is about saving kids. None of the restrictions the man promises will do a thing to save children. The man is lying, again. He is all about subjugating our rights….The man is lying again.

Of course, when stumping for his new restrictions on our rights, hoping they will pass so he can garner the momentum to go after even more of our rights, our president doesn’t hesitate to lie. He is still telling folks that the madman killer used a fully automatic firearm, when he clearly knows the killer did not. And don’t ya love that photo of the guy relaxing at Camp David with his favorite shotgun. Surely you believe that piece of propaganda BS. And he just used Air Force One to fly in the parents of dead children to Washington to cry before and plead his case to various senators. Obama, the cheap trick abuser of victims of all time.

But what’s a little lie when there is so much at stake. The president’s very credibility, what little is left, depends upon defeating the supporters of American freedom. You know, his enemies. He has to prove he can suppress freedom if his ultimate goals of imposing government control over all are to come to pass.

So yeah….Circus.

Our Media. Our politicians. Our president.

They are DANCING ON THE GRAVES OF SIX YEAR OLD CHILDREN. They are SO HAPPY those children died, for this is such an OPPORTUNITY. And they think you should think the way they do.

Circus.

But you better not laugh.